“Be patient with yourself. You are growing stronger every day. The weight of the world will become lighter…and you will begin to shine brighter. Don’t give up.” —Robert Tew
Even though I am still a relatively new navigator, I wish I had read that quote at the start of my career—though I can’t say that I would have heeded the advice or particularly understood it in the moment. When I started in radiation oncology in April 2020, I had never even heard of an oncology patient navigator, let alone thought that I would find myself with that title a few months later. I was a new navigator and the first in our organization; it was exciting and terrifying! It wasn’t until after my first AONN+ meeting that I realized there are a lot of us that have similar “coming of age” stories within oncology navigation. We are a group of people who are self-taught, who have had to climb steep learning curves to identify and address our patients’ needs while having to learn lessons the hard way repeatedly.
